CARRAGEEN
I 'm certain there are some people who will never eat anything they can't spell. That means they are missing out on their fair share of carrageen.
The above mentioned delicacy is, in case you might be wondering, a seaweed extract used in some foods and for other purposes as well. It is the “other purposes” usage which makes me shy away from using it in food preparation. It often has an "h" after the internal "g", since it gets its name from Carragheen, Waterford, Ireland.
The average American, a recent study is survey shows, consumes twenty-one and four tenths pounds of snack food each year. That intake is in addition to what we call “fast foods”, and critics attribute much of our problem with obesity to just such a steady in take of foods. You may not remember it, and Golden Arch food engineers would probably like to forget their efforts in 1992 to market a"91% fat free" dubbed the "McLean Deluxe". It was be the hamburger that even a health food far-outter would love. It didn't exactly"“bomb ou". It just didn't catch on, even with the weight-worried buyers once they found out they were eating what came to be called a" seaweed hamburger."
"What's in a name?" That's what, Willie. No go.
The other uses of carrageen an suggest why eaters may have shied away from such contrived foods. The ways in which it can be used are seemingly without end, and new ones are being added constantly. We can look forward, I think, for a strong return of the substance in both foods and everything from toothpaste to jellies, lotions, medicines, to protect exposed metal surfaces of machinery, to serve us as air fresheners and to meet various agricultural needs as well..
The redeeming quality of carrageenans is their unusual capability of jelling and the stabilization they offers in just about anything that is best used when changed from a liquid to a usable solid. The gels do not demand to demand refrigeration. The process merely stiffens the original material and makes it more adaptable to change which can influence its value. Fast food products make use of it, to bring us foods which taste better and which can be eaten with more pleasant reactions. Ice cream often uses this extract from red seaweed, and it makes breads and pasta dishes tastier. It also causes cleaning material to thicken up and be easier and more efficient to use. The contrasts become endless, when the need of emulsive action is considered to be important. We use materials to “thicken” juices and broths to make them into better tasting, more nutritious soups and stews; we add more of that sort of thing to flour to thicken or thin mixtures we wish to bake, we also rearrange qualities of various products to change them from liquids to gels so we can make better, more efficient use of their helpful qualities.
The carrageenans allow us to make such adaptations in our food products. They have not departed entirely and we will probably see a new version of a hamburger that will be 91% fat free and tasty just the same. We just have to get used to the idea of the complexity of simple seaweed
With our cars and trucks, some of us are just now beginning to find filling stations which stock B-2 fuel for use in regular engines. It is five percent soybeans. It cost several cents more per gallon than conventional gas because it has to be truck in form the mid-west, but many users insist it provides special lubrication advantages of motor plus lower pollution threats. Somewhere along the line, I'd be willing to bet, some product has been used which has been enhanced, thickened, suspended or emulsified by the use of the lowly purple-red seaweed essence.
A.L.M. June 13, 2003 [c626wds]
